A/N: This takes place just after Christine has left Erik at the end of the new movie. His thoughts, feelings. First Phantom fic. Flames are welcome if they are constructive. Forgive me if it isn't exact down to the very last detail, let's just say I took some creative liberties.Please R&R. Thanks.

Angels Cannot Love Demons

I have never felt cold such as this before. It crawls over every inch of my skin, numbing all feeling. And yet, it can't numb the feel of the ring in my hand, each edge pressing sharply into my skin. It can't numb the wetness of my tears flooding down my cheeks, filling every crevace of my disfigurement. Worst of all, it cannot numb this heart of mine which has been rendered to the tiniest of shreds yet somehow beats all the same. My world now consists of this all encompassing sorrow, there is no longer room for anything else.

" Christine…"

It is all I am able to utter, the word coming out in a dry crack. She has left me, left me to the darkness that was once my friend but whose black expanses now seem immense and terribly lonely. Somehow, I had convinced myself that she was different, that she was the one person on this accursed Earth who could love me. But I realize now, in this despair unlike any I have ever known, that I was wrong. Angels cannot love demons. And a demon is what I am, even if I pretended at angel for a time. No angel ever looked like this, no angel ever knew the depths of human cruelty as well as I.

Murderer.

The repeated accusation left the lips of the mob and drifted down to my ears. The mob which had come to kill the Phantom who they now knew wash nothing more than a man.

Animal.

It was another name they called me and perhaps they were right, perhaps I was truly more animal than man. But surely no animal had ever felt such heartbreak as I then felt.

Clutching the ring in my hand, Christine's last gift to me, and grimacing as tears continued to fall, I stood. My last confession tore from my throat as I ran on shaky legs, certain that if I went any slower I would collapse, never to rise again.

" You alone can make my song take flight!

It's over now, the music of the night!"

I stopped in front of one of the mirrors, my gruesome appearance making me cringe anew. I could not even bear to look at myself so I grabbed the nearest thing with which I could destroy that ugliness. A candleholder.

With a sob, I swung at the glass. My reflection disappeared under thousands of cracks and tiny fragments of broken glass. I could not help but wish, even as I continued to smash that mirror and move on to the next, that it was my real face being shattered, it's repulsiveness finally being removed from the world and ending my sorrow. But this wish would not be granted.

Without even realizing it, I had dragged the cloth off the mirror that hid one of the many passages out of my home. I smashed this as well, unable to bear the look of my own face, knowing it had caused my Christine to leave me. That and my wicked deeds but I was unable to grasp anything but my sorrow and my hellish repulsiveness at that time.

Shards of the relfective surface rained down in front of me, revealing the blackness of the passageway. Once again, darkness was to be my saviour. Discarding the object with which I had wreaked havoc on my home, I stepped forward towards the darkness as a man haunted, broken pieces of mirror cruching under my feet.

All but blinded by my still flowing tears, I walked into the loving embrace of blackness, uncaring of the mob which was coming to destroy me. My only thoughts were of her.

Christine, I love you.

Fin